Fall 2010 The East (Wind) is Red: A Survey of China’s Wind Energy Policy and Development By Mark Hanson Over the past 5 years, China has installed over 40,000 megawatts (MW) of wind power capacity, and with thousands more MW worth of projects to be completed in the coming years, it will continue to be the largest wind power market in the world. Yet despite this exponential growth unprecedented in both pace and scope, China’s emerging wind industry remains poorly understood beyond the headline growth numbers, as studies from just a few years ago are wildly out of date. This paper provides a survey of China’s wind energy development, examining changes in policy and industry over recent years to seek key factors for its success. This paper finds that by clearly defining the government’s commitment to renewable energy and forcing the state-owned grid to purchase all renewable energy produced, Chinese policy has provided the income certainty necessary for large scale business investment. State-owned power generation firms have moved to develop large scale wind projects while domestic firms with strong industrial backing have taken advantage of technology licensing and acquisitions to quickly expand their wind turbine production. Chinese firms are likely to continue to dominate domestic production, but the implications for the international wind industry remains unclear. All major wind producers are closely involved with overseas firms and full turbine exports remain virtually non-existent.
Spring 2010 China’s “Strategic” Rare Earths Industry: China’s reforms and the U.S. response By Sharon Nakhimovsky As one of China’s “strategic industries,” rare earths have been a focal point for Chinese officials since Deng Xiaoping referred to them as “China’s oil.” Supplying 97% of the world’s rare earths, China currently dominates the international market. Recently China has introduced management reforms of the industry which target the twin problems of overcapacity and environmental exploitation. Corresponding export quotas and import taxes have sparked debate in the U.S. about the significance of China’s dominance in the rare earths market; where some believe that the U.S. government should be more proactive in lessening dependence on China, others say that market forces and continuing innovation will win the day. Private Equity in China: Current Trends and Developments By Henrik Bläute The Chinese government has in the recent years actively encouraged and promoted private equity as a distinct asset class. Government support, strong economic growth, massive private savings and an underdeveloped financial sector have put China at the forefront of private equity development in emerging markets. Even throughout the financial crisis total fundraising and investment remained relatively strong. The newest trend is a rise in RMB denominated funds taking advantage of the ever increasing domestic capital base. Also, in late 2009, the government undertook a measure to end the strict separation between domestic and foreign funds, allowing international GPs to raise or manage domestic funds. Although the new legislation suffers from the absence of a clear and central regulatory environment and uncertainties regarding taxation rules, it will clearly help to position private equity to remain an important asset class in the future. Fall 2009 From People's Money to International Currency: Internationalization with Chinese Characteristics By Meredith Champlin China has responded to the international financial crisis with two principal policy thrusts: the internationalization of the RMB and reform of the international financial architecture. China’s approach mirrors that of all its economic reforms, namely incremental steps coupled with experimental phases and pilot schemes. The lessons learned by China in both the Asian financial crisis and the current global financial crisis are shaping its vision of financial regulatory reform and the international financial system.
Seeking Truth from Facts: The Institutionalization of Economic Reforms in China By Jefferson Finch
What enabled a Marist-Leninist-Maoist party to transform a planned economy into a market-oriented one without undermining the very legitimacy of the party itself? The institutionalization of the reforms was not the cause-and-effect result of the success of the initial rural Household Contract System reform, though that success certainly buttressed support for further reforms. Rather, it was the result of a wide range of dynamic processes, including ideological wranglings, the interplay between the strategies of politically differing revolutionary elders, decisions and actions taken by different leaders at critical junctures, and the initiative taken by leadership at the local level to spur reforms that were later formally endorsed in Beijing. China's Energy Sector: Challenges to Reform By Mark Hanson Energy is a sector that naturally requires significant non-market intervention to reach its socially optimal form. Governments routinely create state energy monopolies, engage in national-level long term planning, and regulate numerous aspects of the energy markets. It is surprising to find then that China, a country often praised for the management of its economy, has struggled for decades to create the institutions necessary to effectively manage its energy policy. The Prospects for Consolidation in China's Steel Industry By Adam Jarczyk When the state-owned enterprise system was dismantled in 1998, the Party began to lose its grip on the steel industry. Small mills started to spring up across China, responding to a growing domestic demand for basic materials. The explosion in demand as the country began to modernize its cities and build its infrastructure completely changed the dynamics of China’s steel sector; it drove an expansion of supply that fragmented the steel industry and took control over steel production out of the hands of the government, placing it the hands of thousands of independent Chinese entrepreneurs. Does the Middle Class Call for Government Accountability? The Progressive Era American Middle Class versus the New Chinese Middle Class By Lani Marsden The rise of the middle class is widely considered a potent agent of the sociopolitical transition toward democracy and the basis for a democratic government's continued existence. China, however, seems to present an example in which middle class formation is not leading to more accountable government. This puzzle may be explained to some extent by differences between the new Chinese middle class and the middle class that organized the American Progressive Movement, namely the dissimilarities between the two nations' traditional culture of relationships, the history and background of the members of the middle class, and motivations of the middle class. Landlords, Peasants and Communists: Land Reform and Ownership in Pre-Collectivization Rural China 1949-1955 By Jason (Young) Park Pre-collectivization landownership destroyed much of China’s traditional landownership system, but was ultimately an imperfect socialist policy because it was still a form of private ownership. Neatly classifying a massive population into several distinct classes for the purpose of land redistribution was also a difficult task, and the policy did not always have support from local peasants. Defects in land reform policy combined with other reasons to ultimately bring forth Mao Zedong’s collectivization in the mid-1950s and on. A Housing Bubble with Chinese Characteristics By Miljana Vujosevic China’s government, through various administrative controls, is creating as much a cooling bubbles in the housing market. Current housing data suggests that the Chinese housing market is fast approaching a bubble, thus making it essential for the government to explore additional policy options in 2010. Although the PBoC is steadfastly implementing controls to target potential speculators in the real estate market, the real source of financial instability lies in overleveraged real estate developers. Spring 2009The Long March: Reebok's Role in Advancing Labor Rights in China By S. Elizabeth Rowland In 2001, Reebok became the first known multinational corporation to facilitate trade union elections in a Chinese supplier factory. Following initial success, Reebok expanded the experiment to other factories as well. Although these elections and other Reebok worker representative experiments, such as worker health and safety committees, failed to achieve their purported goals of increasing worker representation and sustainable code compliance in Reebok’s Chinese supplier factories, they sparked important changes toward improved labor rights and working conditions. | 
